British Fencing Competition Gender Policy Review

[Definitelyrandom]

Bit of a minority sport, but here we have:

https://www.britishfencing.com/competition-gender-policy-review-survey-opens/

Have just completed the survey and I'm not sure it has been drafted from a neutral standpoint. The introduction talks about "sex assigned at birth" and "cis". The introductory questions ask about the respondent's gender and whether it's the same as sex assigned at birth (with no option to say that the respondent doesn't believe they have a gender identity, of course). There's no question about the sex of the respondent. It includes simplistic multi-choice questions e.g. should categorisation be based on testosterone levels, but with no mention of other factors. It talks about "inclusion" of transfencers without recognising that there's no exclusion, because everyone can fence in their sex category, and that inclusion of trans-identifying male fencers in women's categories leads to the exclusion of women from medals, team places and sometimes the sport altogether. There's a section on the possibility of "open" competitions - but as we've seen from other sports that's obviously not attractive to certain trans-identifying males for obvious reasons.

Have responded and commented as best I could!

@Definitelyrandom

well done for fighting back. Sounds as though British Fencing will need some heavy leaning, as British Cycling and some other sports bodies required, before they realise how bloody stupid they sound and how what they are prattling on about will eventually destroy their sport by withering it away at grassroots level.

Have just spotted that on your link there is a place for people who are not affiliated with British Fencing to air their views…….. well if that isn’t putting out a challenge to MN gender warriors then I don’t know what is.

I may be some time………..

Good for you @viques

I suspect that BF will follow in the footsteps of US Fencing (which is very aggressively for "inclusion") and the FIE. Most recently, in the FIE Veterans World Championships in Florida, a trans-identifying male, Liz Kocab, won the 70+ women's epee category for the second year running. Kocab has apparently been fencing in women's categories since 2009 and has won a shed load of medals (including 8 world championships in 3 age categories).

How did you hear about it OP? DS is a member and hasn't had any info about the consultation.

@NImumconfused Saw it on the BF site and then got an email about a week ago with a link. It does say BF members aged 16 or over, so if your DS is younger that might be why.

He's 17, so should have got it. I will check spam folder. Thanks for the heads up!

Thanks for this, I've filled in the form, written my opinion and have provided links.

Previous thread:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4930900-can-i-bring-your-attention-to-womens-fencing

It’s a very diverse sport. In my experience, there were the athletes and then there were the re-enacting types and past them were the really unconventional what would have been goths in the past. It’s a sport where you can enter and compete against Olympians in an old school hall in Kent so it’s hard to explain the vibe. That they are TWAW does not surprise me in the least.

@Worriedmum159 that's a perfect description. I fenced on the open circuit in the 2000s and it was a very strange mix of serious sportspeople from very privileged backgrounds and people who had arrived there through LARPing and wanted a floaty shirt to ponce around in.
As a sabreur who trained with blokes - men can hit HARD. Particularly in my experience, the swashbuckling LARPers. Hopefully at comp level they should have got it in check, but I wouldn't want to bet my ranking points on it.

@SunshineThelma completely agree. Once got hit so hard on the collarbone I couldn’t drive home!

@nothingcomestonothing Doh! I did check and clearly couldn't see for looking......

@SunshineThelma Yes - even with foils, men can hit hard. I only do an occasional bit of sabre, but teenage boys can whack ridiculously hard. Usually the same ones who fence foil as if they had a lightsabre.

FIlled in - mother of a female fencer. Most of the time she's training she's with adults and they train mixed. She's quite good so often gets put up against a guy who is 6 ft 3. He freely admits at drinks afterwards that he reins in the power quite a bit when paired with her but will then use his (far) greater reach to win!

Not a fencer, but not on the fence either! This is what I wrote. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of space given for opinions, often you get cut off after a few hundred letters. The first section asked for personal experience and opinions.

I am a woman and believe passionately that participation in sport should be sex based. Allowing male born athletes who have been through puberty to compete in womens sports will lead to the gradual erosion of the validity of womens sports, womens achievement in sport, the records women strive to achieve, and equally disappointingly a reduction in training and financial support for young women athletes. Many young women will be discouraged from entering sports in the first place as they begin to realise that no matter how talented they are, and no matter how hard they train, they will be unable to compete on a fair platform against male competitors who have the physiological advantages of height, weight, reach, muscle strength, heart and lung size and other sporting advantages that male puberty bestows and that are permanently retained even if testosterone levels are artificially lowered ( incidentally to levels way above levels that ever occurs naturally in a woman ). It is inherently unfair, and surely if sport is about anything it is about pitting like against like in fair competition to discover who has the better ability on the day.

Please make sure that your policies protect womens sport into the future. Men have their own categories, they don’t need ours as well. It is possible to be respectful of other people and make sure they have a place to participate in their chosen sport , all that needs to happen is that women are accorded the same respect and their dreams and legal rights are not trampled on.

There was then a section asking for empirical research to back up your opinion I said I didn’t have any research but pointed out that binary sex is a biological fact while gender is a social construct. Archeaologists and pathologists looking at human skeletons know immediately if they are male or female bones .

Incidentally I did wonder what scientific, peer reviewed evidence would be coming from the gender woo camp, but didn’t mention this!

Sorry for posting this on an elderly thread but it's the most relevant one i could find buried amongst all the ones that were about troublesome neighbours. Anyway good news (and TiW are remembered)

https://archive.ph/uSCcC

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/13/trans-fencers-banned-from-womens-competitions/

I noticed that Liz Kocab, the TiM referred to above and in the article didn't fence in this year's World Veterans Championships and wondered if that resulted from a change in the US rules. However, I see that he retired after last year's victory.

As an aside, it's interesting that (contrary to what I think would be the balance in Britain) the US based Reddit fencing forum is still overwhelmingly captured by trans ideology.